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Asura’s Wrath Finished!

Okay I have to be honest with you, Asura Wrath is a hell of a game! If you can find it for less than $30 dollars, go for it! If you don’t watch anime then you MUST go get this since you’ll see things that you’ve never seen before. There is one single thing that makes Asura’s Wrath unique: the over-the-top, balls-out, no-holding-back action you see every couple of minutes. It is a marvel to even watch it as someone else is playing it.

There isn’t much to talk about Asura’s Wrath story except that it is a pretty generic anime storyline. Not that it is bad or anything but anyone who watches anime can tell you what will happen next. It is a mix of mainly Naruto, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z but there are also a couple of animes you can see some similarities with. I actually like that it uses this kind of mix. There has never been a game that truly makes you feel like you’re playing in an anime. Asura’s Wrath will make you feel like you’re actually controlling all the actions that you see in animes even though you may be just pressing a couple of buttons.

Asura’s Wrath is split into three different kinds of gameplay. First is a brawler that is not unlike God of War series. You beat enemies, counter their attacks, and finish them off when their healths are low with a finisher. However it is usually an endless battle which you can only end by filling up this bar which I’m going to call it the “Burst Gauge”. Filling up this gauge will allow you to do a Burst. This goes into the next gameplay where you are watching the crazy over the top action while at certain times you’ll need to press a button or move in a certain direction. It is a quick time event. However Asura’s Wrath makes you feel the impacts of these events unlike other games that uses quick time events poorly. It is awesome when you see the button “B” filling up the screen and you’re forced to press every single one of them. The placements of these on-screen prompts are also uniquely place in a way that the button presses makes sense. Another type of gameplay is an on-rail shooter that is similar to Panzer Dragoon. You can shoot blasts but you can also lock on to many enemies and shoot a ton of blasts all at once. I think this is the weakest part of the three gameplays and I’m glad that there are only a handful of them.

I can’t really explain to you the craziness that happens in the game because I believe you deserve to see it or play it for yourself. It is an amazing experience that is totally different from any other games I have played. One final gripe I have about the game however is how you’ll need to buy the $7.00 DLC to get the true ending. The DLC will pay for another part of the game. The game comes with 3 parts with each parts having 6 episodes each. The story doesn’t end correctly with just those 3 parts and I felt way more satisfied after I beat the DLC. The DLC is totally worth it if you paid less than $30.00 for it. It has some of the best and unique episodes in the the game and it is unbelievable that they took it out of the disc.

Aside from the gripe of the DLC, I believe Asura’s Wrath is a true achievement to an anime style game. You get the feel of it but also it sets the level of extremeness to 11! It is an amazing game with some nice visual spectacular. Bring friends to watch it with you or else they would not believe things you tell them about what you just did in the game!

2012
06/15
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Witcher 2 Finished!

Witcher 2 has got to be one the most spectacular games I’ve played in a while. I’m not sure why I held off from playing it ever since I got my new graphics card last summer just for this game. Usually there would be other big name RPGs like Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 to play. Witcher 2 was always being put up back into my back log. Now that I have some chance to actually dive into playing it, I have to say that playing Witcher 2 is an amazing experience.

The first thing that I noticed was how beautiful the graphics were. I had an older graphic card when I started playing this game and I felt that I wasn’t getting the full experience so I bought a new card just for this game. That’s really saying something when I wanted to buy a new graphic card just so I can get a better experience. It means that the graphics really add to the gameplay experience. From the moment you see the sun shine through the forest in Witcher 2, you know that you’re in for a spectacular delight. All the locations are unique to each other and there is always a sense of scale to how large the world of the Witcher is. Character designs are also well done with very high detail character models. Each armor that you put on Geralt (main character in the game) looks unique to each other. There are zippers, pockets, and hoodies that makes each armor feel unique and give a sense of style to the character. This is a game for graphic whores and I’m glad to have bought my new graphic card for this. Even now I plan to rebuild my computer to play this game a second time with a better processor. I am now in High Settings but I want to try to get it to it’s “Uber Settings.”

Speaking about the second play through, the game literally wants you to play it more than one time. CD Projekt Red has made the game so that each locations that you visit is unique to the choices you make in the game. For example, there will be one big choice that you decide at the end of chapter 1 which will determine which location you go to. Each locations has it’s own set of quests and dialogues that you will not see unless you made the other choices. It is a very risky and costly idea for CD Projekt Red to do this. Just imagine the development time it took to make this new location with quests and dialogues that some players won’t even see. Other developers are afraid to do this since they want players to see everything they made in the game. That is why games like Mass Effect 3 or Fable don’t have decisions that really diverge as much from the story. Even though choices matter in those games, you’re mostly bound to see the same people and same quests as everyone. Even the choices in this game are very grey to the point that it was taking me a good time to figure out what I want to do. There is no right or wrong answers in the game and the story will progress but the choices you make matters a lot. The worst thing is that you can tell what will happen if you make a certain choice. Knowing that makes decisions harder since you’re not sure if you should kill off this character who if you let live might be the cause of an end of a civilization. And if you kill him then you just lost the reason for the cause you’re fighting for. Each choices matter and you can tell that there is never a true right choice. Other games like Mass Effect and Fable both go the other route in saying how any choice is the right choice but you decide how your character is developed. However in Witcher 2, you’re deciding how the fate of the world will be and not so much as how your character will be.

Questing in the game is short but very fun. There are only a few handfulls of side quests and they are all unique to each other. Some will even help out with the main quests which was a nice touch. The interesting idea about the quests in Witcher 2 is that it doesn’t really hold your hands as your completing it. The quests may sometime not even tell you where to go or who to talk to. It may just say “Go find X so you can do Y” or “Read the notes and solve the riddle to find the location of X.” Unlike other RPGs these days, Witcher 2 will force you to read the notes you uncover throughout the exploration to solve some quests. RPGs these days hold your hands so much that they show you where you have to go and even point out who or what you have to kill. It is a nice departure to figure things out by myself and I felt better when I do complete the quests.

As for the story, it took me a while to get use to it. You play as Geralt of Rivia who is a witcher with amnesia. Yea I know classic RPG cliche right? Anyways most of the game you’re trying to figure out what happened to your friends and even figure out why certain things are happening. This may have been a good time to introduce the world of the witcher to new players but like the quests, CD Projekt Red doesn’t hold your hands in the story. Things are already happening before you even start playing as Geralt. You’re as lost as Geralt and the story wants you to put the pieces all by yourself. Many things have happened in the past game and there might be hints of it. The only thing I know about the past game is the stuff I read from Wikipedia but I highly suggest players to read that before playing the game. It helps you get a sense of who some characters are and what they have been doing. I felt like the story was similar to Game of Thrones. There are really not much similarities but the style is the same. Both the book and game starts off with things like wars and deaths that have happened already. Characters may talk about it but you don’t really know the full detail of the event until you read further into the story. There is even a feud with different Kings trying to take over each other lands similar to the book. Though they may be similar in certain beats of the story, the story is still unique to itself.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the gameplay. It has been a while since I’ve played a game with a combat system as fluid looking as the Witcher 2. The last game was probably Batman: Arkham City and I still believe that game still have the best fighting mechanics. Witcher 2’s combat is fast but you need to strategize before every battle early in the game. Once you’re surrounded by 2-3 enemies, you’ll most likely die. You have to set up traps, use bombs, sharpen your sword, drink potions, and use your signs (magic) before/during every battle. The battles only get easier once you level up and add new abilities. The animations in combat for Geralt has got to me some of the most impressive animations I’ve seen. He moves very fluidly from one enemy to another. He will do jumps, cartwheels, and even spin his sword depending on how far the enemy is and what the enemy is doing. It is awesome and I never got tired of it. The enemies animations aren’t that great but you’re mostly looking at Geralt in action that it really didn’t make a difference. Even writing about it makes me want to play the game over again just to fight enemies as Geralt.

The atmosphere of this game is amazing. Characters are doing their own things and talking about their own lives. When rain falls, everyone starts talking about how wet it is or how it doesn’t fall as much where they come from. There is not much to do in towns except walking around and talking with others so it really helps that they have their own things going on. The graphics, locations, characters, story, and the combat made Witcher 2 a game that is really worth playing. I highly recommend playing it on a nice PC as the graphics really add to the experience. If not the PC, at least the Xbox 360 version just to get a sense of what this game is all about. I had a great experience with it and I hope to do it again with difference choices the next play through.

2012
05/13
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Walking Dead Episode 1 Finished!

The Walking Dead game is my first adventure game that I have beaten fully from the developer Telltale game. The reason I don’t finish most adventure games is that they get really repetitive throughout it’s short episodes. You’re walking around and talking with everyone while trying to click everywhere that looks intractable. The Walking Dead is similar to this concept but they also throw in some actions sequences to keep you interested. Even some puzzles made sense compare to other Telltale games. It felt like the puzzles were part of the story instead of just some random puzzle the game throws at you. Even though I love the changes that Telltale has made for this game, it is still not perfect.

A lot of things about this game kept me interested to keep playing. The voice acting for one is pretty close to perfect. The characters are all very thought out and they all feel like characters that could exist in the Walking Dead universe. Sure some of them are cliche of any zombie movies/games but I mean it makes sense to have them here. The main character, Lee, is a great addition since you’re playing someone entirely new. He’s somewhat like Samuel L. Jackson and he talks like him too. The way Telltale built up his character throughout this first episodic was pretty nice. You get to learn about his family and the stuff he did to get him to where he was at the start of the game.

The episodic nature also works for this game. I beat it in about 2 hours and I felt that it went by at a really nice pace. It didn’t feel like I was being rushed or the game was just bogging. 2 hours was enough for me to learn everything about the characters in the game. It is something that even the show doesn’t do well.

The gameplay was also a nice departure from the usual Telltale games. There are some quick time events not unlike Jurrasic Park but it makes more sense when it happens here than in that game. There are also some parts where all you had to do was move the reticle and press a button to do an action but I felt more impact given the circumstances. It adds some flavor to the usual walking around talking part of Telltale games. Telltale needs to add these features to it’s other adventure games to keep me interested in finishing an episode.

The game also have branching decisions which will supposedly change the story through the 5 episodes. There will be new characters and certain characters will die depending on your choices but some of the major story beats in the game will stay the same. Think of it like a diamond shape where you pick certain things and it branches out but eventually the characters will all end up at the same ending. It makes sense in a developer’s point as if they didn’t do it then they may have to create assets and stories that only 1 out of 10 people will see. It was also a nice touch that the trailer for the next episode reflects the choices that you made in the current episode.

The Walking Dead kept me interested throughout the whole episode and I believe it could keep me interested for all five episodes. As I said it isn’t perfect though. They are some parts of the story that didn’t make sense of why he was doing it. For one thing, the main character mentions “Walkers” and “Zombies” a couple of times which I don’t think those words exists in that universe. There are also some points in the story that I felt like a glitch might have happened because I had no idea what to do. It is a problem with all Telltale games since you just have to click everywhere to get everything. Sometimes I don’t see where I have to click and it makes me think that the game glitched up. Anyways aside from that this game is very worth playing for anyone interested in a good zombie game. They don’t even have to be interested in the Walking Dead universe. Though it does add nice touches when you already know who certain characters are.

2012
05/06
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Finished: The Walking Dead Episode One(steam edition)

The Walking Dead game has recently came out. Being the impatient person that I am, I caved in and bought it. The genre of this game is an interactive horror game. More popular games that fit this type of genre would be Indigo Prophecy or Heavy rain. The Walking dead is listed to have 5 episodes but as of right now it only has 1. The first episode can be completed within two to three hours. Even though it is a short game, there are many branches the player can choose to give this game a high replay value.

The game starts off with the protagonist Lee, a middle age African American man who is being taken to jail, who has no idea about the zombie apocalypse happening. While the game story takes a turn for the worst you find your secondary character 8 year old Clementine. She is the equivalent of Yorda from Ico. She follows you around the game from room to room and basically you are her guardian. The game is all about the voice acting and the choices you make. The only gripe I have with this game is that you can’t skip scenes. This may not sound so bad but if I already did a part of the story and all I want to do is make a difference choice I don’t really wanna hear the 5 to 10 minutes conversation that goes before my choice making.

The story is determined by the choices you make in the game. If the other survivors are in trouble who do I save, character X or character Y? I save character X how do I try to save him/her? Do we leave the town at day time or do we leave the town at night time? These are some of the choices you make in the game. Even though there may look like many choices in the game, the game still forces some important parts of the story to the player. The choices you make doesn’t really matter and it leads to the general outcome. Should that deter your from playing this game? I don’t think it should. The story of this game should be enough to all Walking Dead fans or people who just like good stories.

The major kicker for me in this game is that you get to meet a few of the actual characters from the Walking Dead show and comic. You get to see why they act the way they act in the comic/show. It gives them a little more back story and explains what they did during the early parts of the zombie outbreak. Once you finish the episode, the game gives you statistics of what choices other people did when they played the story which adds a nice touch. To top it off, at the end of the episode, the game gives you a sneak peek of what might happen in the next episode. As of right now I think this game is worth playing even if you don’t watch the show or read the comic.

2012
04/28
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Puzzle Agent 2 Finished!

Puzzle Agent 2 is the sequel to the Professor Layton clone Puzzle Agent that was released in 2010 by Telltale Games. Both Professor Layton and Puzzle Agent’s main mechanic is the puzzles that the town’s people you visit seem to want you to solve. They both even have a hint system where you need to find hidden hint icons throughout the game to use them during the puzzles. However, Puzzle Agent adds humor to the game which is really missing in Professor Layton.

Puzzle Agent 2 starts where the first game left off. Agent Nelson Tethers is still confuse as to why his case from the last game has been marked as closed when there is still a missing person. He decides the spend his vacation time revisiting the town folks of Scoggins to figure out where the missing person is. That is the gist of the story but like the previous game, the town folks are what makes this game stand out.

All of the town folks in Scoggins have something funny or weird to say to you. Most of them even have a puzzle for you to solve. The reasons to solve these puzzles work with the story most of the time not unlike Professor Layton. The town folks are all unique. There is the guy who gets really jumpy when you talk to him. There is the suspicious sheriff who doesn’t like newcomers. There is even a character which is very similar to Scruffy from Futurama. There are many more but the best parts of the game are when you are introduced to these new characters. However there are not that many new characters in this game. I believe that is where Puzzle Agent 2 falls short is that they rely heavily on all the great characters from the last game that they don’t introduce not many new characters. Even though I complain about reusing the same characters, I still had a blast when I was talking to them.

The puzzles in Puzzle Agent 2 isn’t as great as Professor Layton or even Puzzle Agent. There are about 4 main types of puzzles if I remember correctly. There’s the sort the puzzle in chronological order from pictures. A puzzle to direct a line or laser to a spot using objects to redirect it. A puzzle to move objects around so that a path is open to the exit. And finally a puzzle that involves some knowledge in math to be able to solve it. Though there are some other puzzle that are not of these 4 types, most of the puzzles in the game are. The puzzles with the math stuff are really confusing as I’m not sure how many people would get it. I mean would you really know the 7th and 8th digit of Pi? Or would you know something about integrals? I’m just not sure how Telltales could think that only smart people would play this game since it is a puzzle game.

Though the puzzles in Puzzle Agent 2 are a little disappointing, I really like the story of these games. I love these characters and the world Telltales had created. I love that the main character is in a division of the government called The Puzzle Division. Even his friend is in a division called the Vegetable Crime division. Random things like these are what attracts me to these kinds of games. I played through the puzzles so that I can see more of the story and interact with these characters. Even the animation is so stiff that I have to imagine that the developers are intentionally doing it for a style. It looks cheap and it is better for it. I played it on the Ipad but I believe you can play it almost everywhere. I believe this game is worth a try if you like randomness or just something close to the humor of Family Guy or Futurama.

2012
04/19
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Ace Combat Assault Horizon Finished!

Ace Combat Assault Horizon is an interesting game. Writing this post is really conflicting. A part of me wants to really recommend the game to others while another part of me just want to say that it is not worth playing. Ace Combat does a lot of things right that previous Ace Combats failed to do. The combat, flying, and even the story is better. However it still falls back to it’s old roots by having long missions that gets really repetitive by the end.

Ace Combat would be an amazing game if the missions were just a little bit shorter. There were many times during the missions when I asked myself “Really? They’re making me do this again?” The missions are only about 20-35 minutes long but even then I wish they were only about 15 minutes long. Fortunately each missions are unique to each other. One mission requires you to bomb naval ships while another require you to use a helicopter to save ground troops from incoming attack. Even though each mission goals are unique, the game forces the player to repeat this task at least 5 times each mission. One mission where you have to take out incoming bombers before they blow up Dubai requires the player to take out 5 waves of bombers. Five! Each wave has at least 4 bombers with 3 enemy airplanes for each bomber. The first 2-3 waves are a blast but I got tired of doing the same thing afterwards. The weird thing is that the next mission would make the player do something fresh which would really get me pumped up and excited only to be let down by the repetitive structure of the goal. I really wish that these missions would have been shorter. I clocked in at 8 hours and I felt that the game cheated me on that because of these long missions. I would have liked more missions but shorter burst.

Another thing that really didn’t make sense is the aforementioned helicopter sequences. Though there are only 2 in the game, I felt that these missions were just dragging the game. They’re even longer than the airplane missions which I already mention that I didn’t like. Even worse is that the helicopter controls are horrible. They fly really clunky and some of the buttons are mapped weird. The button to shoot machine guns in a jet is the A button while you use the triggers to shoot the machine guns in a helicopter. I get that the developers wanted to make some kind of a shooter type level but it doesn’t make sense to change the controls. Another weird change was how use button combinations to dodge missiles. You press the RB+LB button to dodge missiles but you press the RB button to shoot missiles. I found myself shooting the missiles myself as I was trying to dodge them. Someone should have looked into the controls or at least let these controls be customizable.

One more thing that really didn’t make sense is the turret levels. There are two missions with this type of gameplay also and they both felt out of place. Using the turret is fine but it really gets tedious when you’re doing it for 30 minutes. It plays like a rail shooter but imagine a turret sequence where you’re in one place for 10 minutes shooting at the same stuff. Yea not so fun.

Aside from the long missions, helicopters and turret sequences, the game is a blast to play. Flying around the jets were always exhilarating. There were certain moments when I had my mouth open because of the amazing visuals the game had. Flying through a storm only to fly higher and see no more rain was a nice touch the developers added. The environments and weather effects they added made the flying so much more immersive. The missions as mentioned before were really different from each other. One mission in particular was so simple but yet really amazing. It involved chasing after a missile that was going into space to target the united states. All you’re really doing is chasing the missile vertically but trying to dodge the missile’s rocket flames as you’re trying to shoot it down is one of the most impressive part of the game.

The new mechanic that they added called Dog-Fight mode is also a great feature. It takes the flight controls away from the player and makes the player take aim and try to shoot down the enemy. Most of the time, the enemy will try to run away from you in some of the most amazing airplane chase sequences I’ve seen in a game. Flying through buildings and over stadiums as building are crumbling over you is an amazing feeling. You have to speed up to try to get a better lock on but enemies may sometime try to trick you and make you fly straight into a building.  Even though you don’t have much flight controls, the auto follow the game does when in Dog-Fight mode isn’t perfect that it’ll just follow the plane everywhere. You still have to keep the lock on to the enemy aircraft or else you’ll be taken out of the Dog-Fight mode. The Dog-Fight mode really makes the game much more interesting as you’re not just flying around trying to lock on to the enemy and shooting a missile. Though you can still do that, I found myself trying to get into the Dog-Fight mode as much as possible. The Dog-Fight is a feature that was really needed to Ace Combat games and I hope this feature goes over to the next Ace Combat games.

The multiplayer mode is interesting too as the Dog-Fight mode goes over to the multiplayer. It get hectic as everyone usually goes into this mode and you can clearly see planes trying to fly away from one another as there might be 4 jets chasing each other. Though I didn’t play much multiplayer, I was surprise to really enjoy the time I had with it.

Ace Combat is a conflicting thing to write about. I really want to recommend this game to people but the missions might get too long and repetitive for people. I stuck with it because I wanted to see what other unique missions that the game had to offer. I’m glad that I stuck with it because the end missions were one of the best in the game. They were also short too so that might had to do something with it. If you’re into flight combat games I would say to try this game out as it adds new features that you would think wouldn’t work in these types of games. Though they might have added too many features with helicopters and turrets, I believe the new addition of the Dog-Fight mode really makes the game worth playing.

2012
04/14
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Journey Finished!

If I have to describe Journey with one word it would be emotional. I just finished playing Journey (10 mins ago) and I really wanted to write about it. I’m still feeling the ending and all that great stuff so this post might be a little more emotional than previous posts.

Journey is a game created by the company ThatGameCompany. The game starts the player off at a desert where the player is only given the hint of what the controls are. After about 5-10 minutes after the player is shown all the controls, the player is left off to explore the world to himself. It is such a powerful idea to allow the player to learn every little tricks the game has by himself. It took me a while to even figure out how the scarf works in the game. It even get more complicated when another player comes into the game.

Speaking of that, the game does a seamless transition when bringing another player into the game. You may just be walking around and there will be a player around the corner. Normally the players will want to work and travel around the game together. With the help of a partner, you can get to places that would not be possible without. The only way to communicate between each player is by using a “chirp” button which can be held down to make a louder chirp. The chirp button is also used to recharge each other’s scarf so that the player can continue a glide. It takes practice but once both players get the mechanic down, using this trick will allow each other to get to hidden places. The chirp tool can be use to also call or alert the player. It is whatever you want to make of it and I pretty much used it whenever I can. Sometime my chirp will mean “Thank You” or another time it will mean “Wait for me!”

It is amazing what this game did with such simple controls and a unique idea. The unique idea is the whole seamless player transition thing but also that you don’t know who is who. No name tags appear on the player and you can’t tell if they go offline or anything. The only way to communicate is through chirping so if you run far away from your buddy, a new buddy might appear in place of him. I had 4 different companions that were with me throughout the game. Honestly, my first companion was the best. I wanted to say thank you TETUTINA (You get to see the companion names at the end of the game) for making the game so much better. I’m going to say that it is a she since the whole “Tina” in the gamer tag. Anyways, she pretty much guided me throughout 75% of the game. The game is only one and a half hour long but she showed me locations that I would not have explored. She was my tour guide throughout that part of the game. She guided me to places where I could get scarf icons to extend my scarf. She took me to places where I was able to learn more about the world. She even dragged me to places where I would have the best angle for a scripted moment. Finally there was this part where she took me to a very super hidden place. I would remember that spot as one of the best moment I have had in a videogame. Basically imagine a flying dragon that is in a secret location that you can get to if you know where it is. The developers hid this dragon to later use it but if you know where it is hidden, you can see it before it comes into the game later on. Even though you can see it later on the game, it is much more amazing to see it where it was hidden. Pretty much she was the best anonymous partner I have had in a cooperative game.

Sadly, after about 75% into the game, it seems she got disconnected from the game so it switched to another player. I believe you get a different cloak after beating the game and starting again so I was able to tell that it was a different person since the new character had the same cloak as me while she had a different cloak than all of us. Before the new player arrived, I started chirping around for her. I wanted to see if she would chirp back. After chirping for about 10 minutes, I decided to explore the world for myself. Throughout that 75% of the game, there were moments where it would have been easy to lose each other. There was this one moment where both players are sliding down a mountain of sand together. If they don’t stick to each other, they can easily lose one another. Throughout that whole scene I was constantly chirping as she was also to not lose each other. I love that scene because I felt something I haven’t felt in a long time in a videogame. Most games have characters that tries to give the player some emotional connection with them. Most games do not do this successfully so when they die, I usually don’t feel anything for them. However, in Journey, I already had this connection with my anonymous partner. The game needed no introductions with each other. My partner just pop out of nowhere and I shouldn’t have had such a strong connection. But by working together, I was able to build this connection that felt more personal than being force because of the story like many other games.

I guess I started out with the best so it was hard for me to switch to these new players. Their scarfs are short and they look as lost as me. I believe if I had one of these types of players, I would have also enjoyed the game differently. We would have explored the world together and try to see if there were anything in the game that we could find. But as I already found most of the game’s hidden features due to having an awesome partner already, I couldn’t possibly work with these new players. It was hard for me to work together. I even let the first player after Tetutina go far away from me believing that she will come back when a new player pops up. Yes even without giving me any names or anything, I was able to befriend a stranger and had an emotional connection with it. I didn’t want to work with anyone else in the game and it showed. I started to hate the new guys because they would not be as great. I really missed her in that last 25% of the game. That may be the only reason why I had 4 companions. I probably could have had only 2 but I just let them go away from me hoping that whoever would pop into my session next would have the same cloak that she did. Sadly, it did not happen.

As you can tell that this game was super emotional on my end. I was so attached to my companion that it helped escalate the game to a level of emotion I wasn’t expecting from a game like this. It is a true testament of a game for me to be this emotionally attached to an unknown stranger. I plan to send her a message saying thank you for a great time playing Journey and add her to my friends list. Also did I mention that the visuals and audios are amazing? The sand and the way they reflect the sun or interior looks phenomenal while floating scarfs/paper/cloth waver left and right with believable motion. I believe the music also helped brought out these emotion. The music was always perfect with what’s happening in the game. It speeds up when there is a high pace area and slows down when it is more of an exploring area.

Great emotional impact, amazing visuals, and perfect music makes Journey a complete package for an awesome time. The gameplay time may be one and a half hour and the price may be $15 but I believe it is worth every penny. I don’t want to compare a movie ticket with this but I believe this is way more worth it then a movie. It is a unique experience that I wish that everyone could have. I also wish that everyone who plays this game would also have an amazing companion as I did. I don’t think I would have had as much of an emotional impact as I would have without the help from an awesome companion. It is a quick game so anyone can finish it. I really do suggest that this should be played in one session. I mean it is only 1.5 hours!

2012
04/07
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Driver: San Francisco Finished!

I went in and played through the rest of Driver: San Francisco the day after my last post. I have to say that the ending is one of the craziest endings I’ve ever seen. If the last post didn’t catch a person’s attention on this game, I hope this post will. I really enjoyed my time playing through this game and I wish a sequel could be made from this as I see some potentials for the developers to add more outrageous things.

Driver: San Francisco is a driving game similar to Burnout but with a story. Most of the game is in the main character Tanner’s coma. Events in the game are being played out by a news broadcast in real life. But the story isn’t really what this game is about. Honestly I didn’t really care for the story that much. All you really need to know is some terrorist name Jericho got you in the coma and you’re trying to figure out what he’s up to in the coma by putting the clues that you get from the news broadcast. Its your basic catching the bad guy 80’s flick story.

As I said, story is not the strong point in this game. The gameplay however excels at being a great driving game. Similar to Burnout, most missions involve you trying to take down enemy vehicles. However it is not really a race though there are some races in the game. What  the game gives you to take these enemies down is by far the most unique thing about this game. The game call it the “Shift Mechanic.” Using the Shift Mechanic, the player is allow to shift into any vehicles in the game. The player can then use these vehicles to ram into enemy vehicles or create roadblocks if cops are chasing you. The game even encourage this by giving out hints saying you should be doing this. It allowed me to keep the game interesting by changing into different vehicles like buses or gas trucks and see what kind of chaos I can do to accomplish this mission.

The Shift Mechanic also allow for some real interesting mission. As stated in the previous post, shifting from one car to another to try to drive under a moving semi-truck to disable bombs all over the city is something I never done in the game. Another one which I don’t want to spoil but I really want to say is pretty much allowing the player to remote control a car while the player is still in the car. This mission really caught me by surprise as I had no idea what I had to do to accomplish it. Not all missions are as unique as the ones I say and some are just the basic take down certain enemies or run away from the cops. Even though these might be the usual missions that I have played before, I found myself wanting to play them due the amazing voice works done by voice actors. Each of the side missions have their own stories and some of them even continue on to other missions. There’s usually a passenger in the vehicle so they are usually talking throughout the mission and the dialogues are hilarious. Most of the passengers don’t know that Tanner is possessing the driver so you can see what kind of dialog the game offers.

Aside from the missions, there are a ton of cars to unlock. I didn’t unlocked them all but I unlocked the cars I wanted to drive around the city. Driving around the city is also a nice thing to do in the game. Being new to the San Francisco area recently, I still found myself catching locations that I remember seeing in real life. Once the game was over, I even drove around the city seeing if I could find places like IGN building or even just the AT&T ball park. Aside from unlockable cars, there are challenges and also movie challenges. The movie challenges are awesome but I’m disappointed that you have to collect 10 movie icons that are scattered across the map to unlock one movie challenge. In the challenge, you drive through a famous scene from a movie. A scene like the last driving scene from Gone in 60 Seconds (the old one) in the game is perfect and it was really enjoyable to play those scenes.

Driver: San Francisco is a really enjoyable game. I love the whole “Shift Mechanic” game feature and the way the developers worked out their side missions and main missions to be as interesting and diverse as possible. It is a really relaxing game with no worries of death and all gloomy-ness in the game world. I found myself really engaged in the game and I believe it is really worth playing. Heck I bought it for 12.99 so it is a steal if you can find it for that price!

2012
04/07
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Skyrim Finished!

I’ve finished this game a while ago but I never got around to posting something about it until now. I want to admit that I did rushed things a little at the end of the game. This is mainly due to the fact that I got so powerful by the end that there was basically no challenges left. I will get to that later but lets start out by saying what an amazing game Skyrim is. I finished the game clocking in at 110 hours. This aside from certain MMOs is probably one of my longest game time in a single game. I also wanted to point out that you can’t really finish a game like Skyrim. There are just so much to do that it becomes overwhelming and will eventually become tiresome. I say that I finished Skyrim because I felt that I did everything that I wanted to do in the game. I finished the main story, all guild quests, deadric quests, and even most of the side missions. However I didn’t find all the locations the game has to offer and did not left the game with an empty quest log.

I want to start out by saying what Bethesda did right in this game compare to their other games. Not unlike their other games, this is a truly open world game where the player can traverse the world and do almost anything the game allows you to do. However unlike their other games, Bethesda really gave a reason to explore the world in Skyrim. In Oblivion, I found myself exploring for about the first few hours of the game but nothing about that world felt distinct or gave me a purpose. Sure there were caves and dungeons for me to explore but I began to see a similarity between them after going into a few of them. Skyrim fixed this problem by making each dungeons, caves, and temples unique to each other. One cave may have a waterfall inside while another will have a river that connects to another dungeon. Making each locations unique helped brought out the realism of the world that Bethesda has created. It also helped me keep exploring one cave to another without being bored due to similarity. It also helps that this game is beautiful. I took about a little over fifty pictures in the game to show them to my friends how gorgeous this game is. Other then Red Dead Redemption, I don’t think I found a game that was able to make me just stop and look around.

Skyrim is a Bethesda game in the line of a lot of open world games they created like Fallout 3 and Oblivion. Similar to those games, they brought back the markers on the game HUD that always tell you that there is a new location around the corner. I love that little marker. It made me want to explore and diverge off my quest path to go find out what this new location might hold. Sometime it may just be a dungeon with some loot in the end. Sometime it may hold a dragonwall which will allow you to get a new shout power. There’s usually at least one unexplored location around the corner and the completionist inside of me want to go explore everything.

Skyrim also improved on their melee combat from both Fallout and Oblivion. It is still not perfect but it is a major improvement. I love the kill cams and I love that they just released a patch updating it with more kill cams. Hits are also properly detected now unlike Oblivion where you were not sure swinging the sword did anything at all. However once you get a powerful enough weapon, most of the combat skills the game introduce become useless as swinging the sword would just do as well.

Speaking of getting powerful weapons and armors, Skyrim changes the way how enemies level up with you in Oblivion. In Skyrim, enemies have a set level so if you’re level 30, a level 10 enemy shouldn’t be a challenge. I finished the game at level 50 so I was pretty powerful already. I got the best weapons and armors early in the game as I improved my smithing skills. By the time I got the weapons and armors, I was pretty much unstoppable. I was hold the block button as an enemy attacked me for about 30 minutes to just increase my blocking skills. It is not to say that I want enemies to level up with me though. I hated that in Oblivion and I love that I am super powerful in this game but it would have been nice to get some challenge from an enemy once in a while. Sure they throw in some Ice Mages to try to kill you but they become nothing with some help from potions. This is probably one of the main reasons why I rushed it in the end of the game. I was just running through the dungeons without the need to worry about death. I would have liked some challenge but hopefully they can make up for that with DLC.

Some enemy variety would have helped also from becoming mundane later on. They were able to add variety to the places you explore so I don’t see why they couldn’t add a few different enemies. After killing thousand and thousand of the same enemies, I eventually just ignored them and ran past them. They can’t hurt me and I don’t want to kill them anymore. As I said before, hopefully the DLC will change that.

I have finished with Skyrim for now but I’m excited for DLC that will be coming later on this year. Bethesda promised that they will most likely be more expansion like DLC than they had done in the past so here’s hoping that they could add better enemies and more challenges.

Skyrim is a game that needs to be played by anyone who is even slightly considering about it. It is a remarkable game and a true testament to modern video games.

2012
03/31
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Mass Effect 3 Finished!

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I’ve been meaning to write this post as soon as I finished Mass Effect 3 but it seems really difficult when I finished it at 2 a.m. two days ago. Also being sick doesn’t really help motivate me to write my first blog. Anyways lets get down to the nitty-gritty of this game.

I wanted to get it out as soon as possible so here it is: Mass Effect 2 is a better game than Mass Effect 3. There are many reasons including the controversial ending this game had (will get to that later) that made me believe this is true. Mass Effect 3 was suppose to be the closure to a story of Shepherd and his team that we’ve been following and developing over the past 5-years. It was suppose to be an amazing end of a journey. What it turned out to be was a long chore helping out all the important species of the Galaxy. Not that helping out species in the Galaxy is boring but the way Mass Effect 3 handled it seems too ridiculous for what it is.

In this whole game, Shepherd is tasked with uniting the species of the Galaxy to form a universal army to take down the Reapers. In context it sounds like an amazing game. But the part where I’m uniting the galaxy seems too ridiculous. I know Shepherd is probably the most important living being in the Galaxy of the game but I can’t believe that he is able to solve all the problems the Galaxy had in less than a year. I say less than a year because the game does not tell how long Shepherd’s quest is but it is hard to believe that Earth is still alive from Reaper’s invasion after a year. Anyways, throughout the game Shepherd is solving all the problems like the Genophage of the Krogans, the war between the Geth and Quarian, the feud between Krogans and Turians, and even some Asari problems thrown in to the mix. I believe in the developer’s mind, most of these problems had to be solved. However I can’t see it as how everyone is asking for Shepherd to help them with their problems before helping him fight against the Reapers. Can’t they just wait until the Reapers are gone? If Shepherd can’t help them then does that mean that they won’t help Shepherd fight against the Reapers which means they are left out fighting the Reapers for themselves? Wouldn’t that mean they’re likely to be extinct with their problems still unsolved? Questions like these came up as I was playing the game and it really ruined my play time with the game.

Another thing I didn’t like was how useless and mechanical most of the decisions that were made in previous titles were for this game. They pretty much did the same thing as Mass Effect 2 where most of the decisions that I did for saving someone life is reflected by an email message. However, unlike Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3 holds a greater weight in using all the decisions that were done in previous games. Most importantly was who survived during the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. The way they handled it in Mass Effect 3 feels very mechanical. I had all my squadmates survive the mission in Mass Effect 2 so I clearly saw how it didn’t really effect anything in Mass Effect 3. Whenever you meet them again in the game, they fell like they could be replace with any new character in the game. I even was told that certain scenes were replaced with some random character if that character died in Mass Effect 2. It’s understandable that BioWare had to handle it like this. If only 50% of gamers had all the squadmates alive then the other 50% would not see that part of the story if they had created specifically for all the gamers who had those squadmates alive. It makes sense but games like Witcher 2 had branching stories where gamers who picked certain decisions would not even see unless replayed. I wanted something like that but it seems BioWare had limited budget and time to do something like this.

As for the ending, I didn’t really mind it. It wasn’t a great ending by any means. I hate endings that has obvious choices for you to pick which ending you want to see. The ending basically comes down to Shepherd picking three buttons to choose what kind of ending the gamer wants. They may not look like buttons but they are buttons. The ending also left a lot of questions too which I don’t think will be answered with whatever Mass Effect games that will be coming out later on. I’m not even sure if they will include what the gamer chose as an ending for later games. It was a bad way for Bioware to handle an ending that should have been the Swan song for Shepherd.

So with all this talk, what about all the pros? There weren’t many this time around. The graphics looks better than previous games. I tend to look at all the amazing Lens Flares that BioWare had created for almost all light sources in the game. It really brought out the SciFi aspects of the game. I also really like the combat of this game. I felt like I was getting more powerful as I leveled up. By the end of the game I was charging through every enemy and pulling enemies every 1.5 second. It was an amazing feeling to be so powerful to take down 4 brutes in less than a minute. Other than these pros, I don’t think there were much improvements from the second game.

As I said before, Mass Effect 2 was a much better game than Mass Effect 3. But as a gamer who’ve been following the tale of Shepherd for 5 years, this game is necessary to play if you want to find out how the story of Shepherd ends. It may not be a great ending but it is necessary to complete. BioWare is creating a new ending for this game but I would finish the game before the new ending comes to see what BioWare visioned for the game. You may come out disappointed but it is still a game that is needed to be played.

2012
03/30
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